one example is at Africa's Lake Rudolph and the Omo Valley (200kms away) where sediment layers were not consistent with each other. They were dated to the same period, but the pig fossils they found at each location were not the same type of pig fossil.

I can probably find fifty species of spider in a 10-acre field. Does this mean that different parts of the field are currently in different periods of time.

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Peg, post #284, writes:

...and there is evidence that the DNA you are talking about is found in all the people around the earth...not only the North Americans.

This is untrue. The same haplogroups are found in populations across the world, but the haplotypes, which are smaller branches of the haplogroups are not found outside of North America, but is found in the 10,000-year-old fossil Coyote was talking about.

The point wasn't that pigs aren't useful index fossils, or even that Peg's example is invalid: the point was that Peg is failing to actually present the argument. How can we carry on a debate when Peg is only saying, "the pig fossils are not the same type"?

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P.S. Spiders regularly cross entire oceans by ballooning on threads of silk, and thereby colonized the Pacific Islands. Can pigs do that? :P

That would be really nice if that were how you presented the argument.

Admittedly, there were alternatives that would have been clearer.

I'm sorry that it offends you so much that I chose not to use them.

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I did not challenge Peg's argument about the usefulness of index fossils: I challenged his presentation of the argument. What is the difference between the statement, "They found two types of pigs in one region" and the statement, "I found fifty types of spiders in one field"?

I did not know what Peg was talking about. I tried a few Google searches on "Omo Valley pig fossils" and what-not, but I couldn't find anything informative within the reasonable timeframe of my lunch break.

Does it not upset you when somebody posts something and forces you to do all the work to figure out what they're talking about?

I'm sorry that I let my annoyance dictate the tenor of my response to Peg.

Edited by Bluejay, : I hid the entire message! (I swear I fixed this right after I wrote it... odd)

Edited by Bluejay, : I finally put it in the right place!

Edited by Bluejay, : Hidden content no longer needed: no one needs to remember the silly fight between Pandion and I.